Tag Archives: secrets

Early last December, Charlie Baker pushed through $118M dollars in cuts in services across the entire state on his own, side-stepping the state legislature and the people of Massachusetts. The governor’s office grouped the budget cuts into large, vague categories that make it impossible to know which services in your town were actually cut. For example, Charlie Baker took away $6.5 million from the state police—but what exactly will go? I wanted to know.

So I called the governor’s office and asked for the details of his budget cuts. His aides have repeatedlytold me that Charlie Baker does not want the public to know the details of his budget cuts. According to the governor’s office, the specifics of Charlie Baker’s budget cuts are not available for public circulation. Charlie Baker is hiding information about public money to pay for public services from the people of Massachusetts.

I have asked Charlie Baker’s office why the public cannot know the details of his budget cuts. In the meantime, I found a list of the cuts split into earmarks for individual services. Charlie Baker is cutting services to mothers in prison, hungry children, people seeking job training, fisherman, gay people, the elderly, people struggling with drug addiction, nature-lovers, and anyone who has ever been sick. I compared the numbers between the official cuts from Baker’s office and the secret earmark list that he is hiding from the public. Even at fifteen pages, this secret list of budget cuts is incomplete.

Please call Charlie Baker’s office (617) 725-4005 and ask for the details of the budget cuts yourself! Here’s a script you can use:

Happy New Year! My name is Joshua Reyes and I live in Cambridge, MA. I’m curious about cuts to the state budget.

The official line item account of Charlie Baker’s 9C budget cuts make it impossible to tell which individual services have been cut. I’d like to have a copy of Charlie Baker’s 9C budget cuts to the financial year 2017 budget listed by individual earmark to see which programs in my city were cut.

How can I get a copy of it? Thank you and have a good day!

If they tell you that the earmarks are not available to the public, ask them, “Why are the details of slashes to public services in the public budget a secret from the public?”

For your convenience, I’ve gathered all the documents I have so far in one place. Have a look for yourself!

Official Line Item Account of FY17 Budget Cuts by General Category PDFExcel

Secret Line Item Account of FY17 Budget Cuts by Individual Service PDFExcel

For some reason everyone keeps reporting that the budget cuts are $98M. The official report clearly shows Charlie Baker slashed the budget by $118.5M. (The press missed more than twenty million dollars!) Even with the secret list of each of the earmarks I still cannot account for $64M in budget cuts!

So you can see what is missing, here is a comparison of the official and secret lists of budget cuts: